[Python-3000] [Python-Dev] Reminder: last alphas next Wednesday 07-May-2008 (original) (raw)

M.-A. Lemburg mal at egenix.com
Sun May 4 18:31:09 CEST 2008

On 2008-05-04 18:14, Christian Heimes wrote:

First, Skip, I only care about the default behavior. There's already a way to do it differently: PYTHONPATH. So, Fred, I think what you're arguing for is to drop this feature entirely. Or is there some other use for a new way to allow users to explicitly add something to sys.path, aside from PYTHONPATH? It seems that it would add more complexity and I can't see what the value would be. PYTHONPATH is lacking one feature which is important for lots of packages and setuptools. The directories in PYTHONPATH are just added to sys.path. But setuptools require a site package directory. Maybe a new env var PYTHONSITEPATH could solve the problem.

We don't need another setup variable for this. Just place a well-known module into the site-packages/ directory and then query it's file attribute, e.g.

site-packages/site_packages.py

The module could even include a few helpers to query various settings which apply to the site packages directory, e.g.

site_packages.get_dir() site_packages.list_packages() site_packages.list_modules() etc.

As I've said a dozen times in this thread already, the feature I'd like to get from a per-user installation location is that 'setup.py install', or at least some completely canonical distutils incantation, should work, by default, for non-root users; ideally non-administrators on windows as well as non-root users on unixish platforms. The implementation of my PEP provides a new option for install: $ python setup.py install --user Is it sufficient for you?

Just in case you don't know...

python setup.py install --home=~

will install to ~/lib/python

The problem is not getting the packages installed in a non-admin location. It's about Python looking in a non-admin location per default (as well as in the site-packages location).

-- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com

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